Jonathan Wynne-Jones is the Religious Affairs and Media Correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph. He was described as "the scourge of church and state" at the Britsh Press Awards for 2009. He tweets @JonWynneJones.

Reaction to archbishop's Facebook comments prove he was right

If the archbishop was concerned about the decline of personal communications and the impact of this on society, maybe he should also be worried about the apparent inability of people to read. Or maybe it's just an inability to get past prejudice and overcome intolerance.

As David Aaronovitch pointed out yesterday, archbishop-baiting is a cheap sport and judging from the number of anonymous posts on blogs giving Nichols a kicking, it's a popular one.

Those who have moaned about the archbishop believing in a "sky-fairy" can be dismissed at once, but the more interesting and serious charges have been those that have completely misrepresented him.

Archbishop damns Facebook, a number of blogs have reported. How exactly? Some have trotted out the line that his comments reinforce that churchmen are out of touch with the modern world and then others argue it shows the church as the home of doom-mongers. As Aaronovitch puts it, they reflect part of a "determined – almost ruthless – cultural pessimism".

If people actually bothered to read the story and read the quotes they would see that the archbishop actually has an impressive grasp of modern culture and cares deeply about its future.

His argument for those who didn't quite get it goes like this – email and text is a poor substitute for face to face conversations. Relationships suffer when there is a lack of personal interaction, and genuine friendship is being replaced by an obsession with collecting friends on websites such as Facebook and MySpace.

Nowhere does he actually attack these websites, rather he acknowledges – rightly – that for most people they can help build a community, if not a fully rounded one.

But, he argues, for people who put all their identity and self-worth into these networks and collecting friends, and therefore are fairly vulnerable and fragile already, the ending of these friendships can have devastating effects, even leading to suicide.

It is hard to see how anyone can dispute this. If further evidence were needed, the Daily Mail has an interview with the mother of a girl obsessed with social network sites and a warning from the director of Kidscape, a children's charity.

It's easy to try and ignore the views of an archbishop, but much harder to apply the same denial to these comments.

Much of the criticism of Nichols derives from a hostility to the Church and a drive to have its leaders' pronouncement pushed from the public square, no matter how pertinent their comments are. Some also no doubt comes from those who are addicted to these sites and don't want to face the facts.

Because the truth is that many, obviously not all, blogs and websites do have a "dehumanising" effect. People would never talk to one another the way they do on these sites.

Under the cloak of anonymity, people feel free to say whatever they like, no matter how ill-informed or ill-judged. In fact you only have to look at some of the church blogs to see the worst examples of this. It's as if all normal rules of human interaction go out of the window once these addicts are sat in front of their computer screens.

While most normal people are able to enjoy the great benefits of blogs, for those with empty lives and shallow friendships they are a drug, an asylum for the socially inept.

Maybe we should welcome the fact that these sites provide communities for those who otherwise would be friendless, but maybe we should also not rush to ignore the comments of an archbishop, just because he believes in God. Ironically, the reaction to his comments has proved that he is right.